I've been writing and submitting short stories for about four or five years now. With each submission I send a short query letter and either attach my story or paste it in the email, depending on which they prefer. Many publications now use Submitable, which still involves the query letter and attaching or pasting the story.
Yesterday, for the first time ever, I made the mistake I've always worried about - I sent a story that did not match the query letter. The query begins, "I've attached a copy of my 1,200-word story, Late November... But instead of sending Late November, I sent a different story.
I'd estimate that I've written 40 to 50 short stories. I've had 14 published, which I consider a good percentage, although it could be better. With that many short stories, it's important to keep them well organized. It's easy, too.
First, I just create a new file in my Documents and title it "Short Stories". Pretty creative, I know. Then every story I read gets its own file, with the story, a query letter, and a list of submissions. The title of each file is the title of the story. So inside the file Late November, located in the Short Stories file, is the story Late November, the query letter, and the list of magazines I've submitted it to, along with the dates and the name of the editor it was addressed to.
I also keep a separate file titled Published Stories, inside the Short Stories folder. Every time a story gets accepted for publication, it goes to the Published Stories folder. Easy, and for me easy is usually better.
Some people use a program like Excel to keep track of all this, but those people are far more computer literate than I am. My way is organized and simple, and being organized is so important, especially if you start writing and submitting a lot of stories.
